Cat and Mouse
by xWorldOfChancesx
Summary: This cat and mouse game has gone on long enough, though try as they might, neither can walk away. Bamon / Implied Delena *OneShot* Dark!


**In response to Daria's request. **

'_**Write a hurt/dark/comfort fic about Bamon's relationship after Elena Gilberts Death'**_

**I honestly don't know what this is. I started writing, and then just didn't stop. I hope this makes sense to people, because I've had about seven cups of coffee and is 3am here. Go easy on me; please?**

**SORRY FOR ANY MISTAKES!**

**P.s This gets a tad depressing. You have been warned.**

* * *

**November 2015 **

"Sometimes, I really hate you." the words were slow and carefully chosen, he can tell that much. She leans over the table and taps it five times with her fingers, as if trying to imbed something in the wood.

Raising an eyebrow, he looks to the girl and she looks to him, he can see her body stiffen and her mouth hardens. He will never admit it, but he loves what he can do to her with a mere glance.

"Don't look at me like that," she orders, "I can't stand it when you look at me like that."

She stands from the table and carries herself towards the door that will lead her out into the living room where the whooping and hollering sounds are heard. They are loud and unreasonable: a bit too much. To the outside world it seems like her perfect scene, though he knows it isn't.

She pauses with her hand on the door and he can see the lines in her back, the creases in her shirt, all ruffled, still.

She's waiting, he knows, for his rebuttal for it seems that is all they do; reply to one another, seeing whose jarring comment will make the other one spill over like water until there is no hope.

"Hate?" is the word he chooses to repeat, the one he knows will irritate her the most. She turns to him, her hair starting to spill on her back and across her shoulders. Her eyes, a murky green, stare at him, it's a cold stare that he supposes should make him feel discomforted. He doesn't feel it, so he just stares back at her, instead.

"Yes," she says coolly, "hate." and he merely nods.

Unexpectedly, she slams her hand against the doorframe and a loud bang is sounded, though only they hear it, for the loud sounds outside the door swallows it all up. She turns to him, her teeth clamped tightly together and she stomps over to him.

"God, Damon," she shouts though the noise at Caroline's party outside the door is louder still, he stares, "stop acting like that! Can't you care?" and Damon continues to stare at her.

"Stop staring at me with those eyes! I can't stand it, I can't stand it!" and she covers her own eyes and she bends over and seems to revert into herself.

"What do you want me to do, Bonnie?" Damon asks, though it sounds like a murmur. His voice is without a single inflection, it's level, monotone, something he knew she would hate.

"I want you to care!" a cry, and then, in a dejected whimper: "Why don't you care?"

* * *

**November 2013**

They've been playing this cat and mouse game for years, though neither can pinpoint exactly when it started. When she first met Damon Salvatore, she was still a young, teenage girl just trying to make it through high school. It wasn't until she and her friends learned the Salvatores' deadly secret, that she was forced to grow up.

"I hate snow," she tells him one day. It's two years before their blowout. Damon looks to her, his blue eyes, colder than the snow. She thinks briefly of the woman from _before_; she thinks of the beautiful girl that meant the world to both Damon and Stefan, who also happened to be Bonnie's best friend.

_Elena Gilbert._

If she were to be honest, Bonnie hadn't thought about anything else these last few months. Every thought she had, somehow revolved around her best friend.

_Well, her dead best friend._

Elena's death had been hard on everyone. Jeremy reverted back into drugs, Caroline threw a party every weekend in an attempt to not think about Elena's passing, the Salvatores' had disappeared completely and Bonnie _stopped_.

For a while, she just stopped being Bonnie.

Gone was the strong levelheaded witch that everyone went to in a crisis. She was simply lost.

This all changed when Damon returned to town. No one knew that underneath his cocky smile and snarky remarks was a brokenhearted boy; no one except for Bonnie.

She could tell just by looking at him.

They both felt lost.

She remembers finding him at a bar out of town, exactly three months after Elena's car had been thrown from Wickery Bridge. They sat together drinking in silence until he offered to take her home. When he dropped her off, instead of getting into a heated battle of wit like they normally would, she simply invited him inside her house. In silence, she walked into her bedroom and lay on her bed. He followed suit and crawled beside her and even though she wanted to kick him out, she allowed it. SHe allowed him to stay.

She slept in his arms.

Finally, for the first time in months, they got the comfort that they both craved.

After that night, they never slept alone again.

"Why?" he asks, interrupting her inner musings.

"'Cuz it's cold, what else?" and she stares up at the sky from beyond the window in the house containing them and he follows her gaze where he sees the snow kisses roof tops and the cold ground and even Tyler, Caroline and Matt who thought it fun to build a snowman. It's the sort of scene one would expect Bonnie to be involved in, though she's not. She just wants hot chocolate, he knows.

"You've been under Caroline's influence for too long." Damon replies and Bonnie smiles even though his voice and face remain placid. She knows he is joking and she touches his hand and he doesn't pull away, just stares out at the snow, Bonnie at his side.

When she thinks back at this scene, Bonnie realizes that she was clueless at the time, for even then, the game of cat and mouse was in fact being played.

Maybe it's when Caroline questions her, a few days later, that she starts to see the game in play.

"Your hair," she states, Bonnie touches the ends; it still reaches to her shoulder blades. "You've grown it long, why?"

"It's not long," Bonnie retorts.

"Well, no, but for _you_ it's long." Continues Caroline, and Bonnie seems to consider it.

"I guess," she replies with a shrug before sipping at her tea.

"Why though?" Caroline asks, Caroline's question circles her mind.

_Why_?

"Needed a change, I guess." Bonnie says.

Suddenly, Bonnie remembers the woman she's seen in the picture Damon carries with him, the woman Damon loved, and she remembers how he told her, in a fleeting conversation, that one of the things he loved most about Elena was her long brown hair. Bonnie touched her hair and nearly gasped out loud.

No.

She will not turn into Elena.

She will not be Elena for him.

_She has too much self-respect for that._

"I'll cut it first thing tomorrow," she mutters before standing and leaving the room.

* * *

**March 2014**

She's a temporary replacement, simple as that. At a year and eight months before their fight, Damon thinks this.

She comes to him and holds his hand, murmurs things to him for only him to hear, though he never pulls away, never orders her silence for she is a distraction.

A temporary one at that.

His heart still hurts sometimes when he looks into the sky or when he closes his eyes. He dreams of long brunette hair pulled into a tight ponytail. He dreams of sparkling eyes that bore through him when she smiles. Though he knows it is nothing but a fabrication.

He hasn't cut his hair much since she died, perhaps of a reminder of the pain he feels, and he knows it's becoming unruly. Damon thinks of cutting his hair a lot more now, though he never does it. Perhaps it is in honour of Elena and the time she has been away, or maybe it is because Bonnie will waltz up to him and touch it, telling him how unfair it is that his hair, despite it's growing length, is beautiful and she is jealous of it. The temporary distraction never ceases to please him. A replacement for a woman the poor girl could never add up to.

_Never_.

Though one day, Damon decides he is really tired of such long hair that is reaching to his chin and he asks Bonnie to cut it. At first she is surprised by this request, but in the end, concedes. She pulls out scissors she has him sit on a stool, though he ends up being taller than her still so instead he sits at a chair, still reaching to her chest and Damon realizes for the first time how small the female is.

She touches the sides of his face so softly it surprises him for a moment though he concedes to her advances and when she tilts his head down, he obeys.

_Snip_.

The first piece of hair falls and Bonnie stills. "How short?" she asks him.

"Short, so it goes to my ears."

"I've only ever cut my hair before," she warns and he gives a _"Hmm,"_ and lets her know that it's okay without ever really saying it. He can feel her tiny fingers tremble slightly and he can sense her worry, though he says nothing and neither does she.

_Snip, snip, snip._

* * *

Bonnie is tired of the cat and mouse game, and she tells him so, Damon merely smiles sadly and she kisses him; he concedes though they both know she's merely a replacement.

She won't tell anyone, not even Caroline but she still feels lost. _Elena's death, Grams death, her mother's abandonment, always being second best._

Right now it was all taking its toll. And it was beginning to be too much.

_Slowly but surely, Bonnie was losing herself._

* * *

**August 2014**

At a year and three months before their blow out, their relationship turns sexual, he kisses her neck and takes her; he takes the last piece of purity she had, the last shred of her dignity goes out the window and he's not sorry, no not a shred.

Though he's lying to himself.

* * *

During these times, he notices that Bonnie goes to visit her Mum a lot more than before. He doesn't know why and he and all their friends are too afraid to ask.

Sometimes, Bonnie stays at his apartment for days at a time, sometimes even a week, and she feels like they are a real couple. Sometimes he takes her to dinner or they'll take a walk and they'll talk, though in the end it all results in sex. He touches her here, kisses her there, and it all feels really very wonderful.

It's times like these when Bonnie starts to think that she's in love with him and maybe, just maybe, he's in love with her to.

* * *

**November 2014**

In a year before their blowout, Damon knows she can't be his forever, though this doesn't mean Damon won't try to keep her as his for as long as possible. He might not love her, but she belongs to him. It's unfair; it's unfair to have her in his snare, though she never complains so he never bothers to care too much. He kisses her here, touches her there, and in return, he gets her love, all of it, and he drinks it in selfishly. He wishes he could care, but his sin is so deep, the feelings of a 19-year-old girl are the least of his concerns.

She tells him she loves him after sex sometimes and he only smiles, a sad smile, because he will never reply with what she wants to hear, even with her mouth and heart so willing.

He thinks he's broken. Far too broken for someone as good as Bonnie.

* * *

Lately every time she see's him, she wants to scream in his face.

She is so frustrated.

Last night she almost asked him '_What did she have that I don't?_' but she stopped herself just in time, because true be told; she is petrified of what his answer could be.

* * *

**December 2014**

It's Eleven months before their fray, and Damon knows now that she cries at night. Whether it's because of him, Elena's death or the fact that life has screwed her over for so long, he isn't sure.

_And neither is Bonnie._

Damon hears her even when she thinks he's fast asleep and she lies in bed next to him. Her tears hurt him, but he can't dare reach over, to comfort her, because he still dreams of brown hair and long legs and a beautiful smile and that horrible death. Sometimes he kisses Bonnie to let her know she's the only replacement for him, that he could never have another one. Sometimes he'll kiss her to let her know he cares deeply for her even though it's not in the way she wants, or needs.

* * *

Bonnie feels stupid. The cat and mouse game has never ended, no, not even now.

Bonnie's magic has stopped working, but she can't find it in herself to care.

She's no longer feeling lost.

She's just alone.

* * *

**March 2015**

At eight months before their fight, Bonnie stops coming to his apartment. Damon notices she hasn't been in weeks and he starts to feel genuinely nervous, he's afraid something bad has happened to her, or, worse, she's tired of this game and she has left him, his single and only replacement. It is in these moments that he thinks for a minute that maybe he loves her, but then she returns and he realizes he is mistaken, for he still dreams of long brown hair and dazzling smiles.

Sometimes Damon feels bad, sometimes the guilt is too much, sometimes Damon, when alone, feels like crying, though he doesn't. He has not a tear left in him, and maybe he never will.

* * *

When Bonnie returns after a month stint, they have sex and he isn't kind at all, she would never say it but he had been too rough, so the next time they have sex, he's gentle like a real lover should be.

As soon as they finish she begins to cry. She cries so hard he doesn't know what to do; so she clings to him and he doesn't remove her.

"P-please, I can't stand it! I don't know what I'm doing. I – I can't do this for much longer" Bonnie exclaims, and Damon, though he knows what she means, says nothing.

* * *

It's annoying and hurtful that Damon doesn't care that she's going insane because of him, that he won't stop it. She hates him, she hates that he won't care.

The next time she see's him, she notices he's more gentle with her and sometimes he'll caress her hair, and now when they sleep, he holds her. Despite all of this she knows he doesn't love her, or at least, not yet.

She wonders if she can accept this, though she isn't sure.

These past few months Bonnie has been seeing a therapist.

She has severe abandonment and commitment issues.

Whoever would have guessed?

* * *

**July 2015**

Bonnie is visiting her mum four months before their blow out. In this time while she was away, for one night, Damon doesn't dream of long brown hair, but rather, Bonnie.

When he awakes, in his own twisted way he thinks he's betrayed Elena.

Damon wonders if he's finally fallen in love with Bonnie, and the thought terrifies him because he doesn't want to leave Elena behind to live in the shadows by herself. He can't give her that betrayal. Though it seems he worried for nothing because the next night, he dreams about her once more. He doesn't have to feel the guilt.

The game of cat and mouse continues.

* * *

Bonnie returns to Damon a few weeks later and she's sobbing, though she never tells him why and Damon never asks. He just takes her to bed and makes love to her, the first time that it's ever happened, because before it was _just sex_.

It's the least he can do and his mind is all jumbled because sometimes he dreams of brown hair and another night, chocolate skin and green eyes.

The next time they see each other she tells him she loves him. He kisses her forehead and tells her he knows and that he'll try, he'll really try.

He fails.

* * *

**September 2015**

Bonnie vomits a lot now, she's getting skinny, well, skinnier than before. She doesn't live with Damon, she's gone back to live with Caroline in their crappy apartment with Tyler. Bonnie's still going to college while working at a bar. She feels dizzy a lot, she gets sick more than she cares to, and sometimes she gets nervous when she doesn't get her period. She tells Damon, after not seeing him for a month, that she thinks she's pregnant. He frowns and then laughs in her face.

_A Vampire can't knock someone up._

Damon doesn't touch her for a week. He hardly even looks at her.

* * *

It's a few weeks before their blow out, and Damon is pleased when Bonnie gets her period, though she doesn't come to him with a smile. Instead she screams, she tells him she's sick and tired and that he never tried, not once, to love her. He apologizes though they both know it isn't sincere.

Half of him believes that he tried though, and he tells her this.

What's left of her friendship group, he knows, are worried, for even though Bonnie acts cheery towards them and is always laughing, there are occasion when she messes up, sometimes she cries in front of them, she's a mess and everyone knows it. It is, for this reason, perhaps, why Caroline decides another party is in order and in just a few weeks, it happens.

_The fallout._

* * *

**November 2015**

"Why don't you care?" the question hangs in the air.

"Damn it, Damon!" she says, she holds herself and is surprised when he pays her an act of kindness, gets up, holds her.

"You won't even try!" she cries.

And Damon says nothing for he knows it is the truth.

"Do you love me?" she finally asks and Damon releases her. She looks up at him, pleadingly, "Even just a little?"

Damon doesn't know.

"I dream of you, sometimes." he says, and she snorts.

"Sometimes instead of her; I've dreamed of her for years, since I met her actually." Damon pauses and looks at her again.

"I'd like to blame this all on you, but truthfully I can't. My life has just spiraled out of control. Exactly how it did when Elena died. I'm not me Damon. Right now everything's so messed up, and I guess I needed someone to save me. I wanted it to be you, but how can you save me, when you can't save your self?" Bonnie says. This has been on her mind for a while, and it feels amazing to voice her opinion.

"You chose this," he reminds her, "You can leave at any time."

"How can I leave? How can I leave?" she repeats over and over like some kind of mantra and she shakes her head and turns to leave the room.

* * *

Caroline finally steps in a few days later, "What's going on, Damon?" Damon says nothing, "If you two want to be together, that's fine…" she shakes her head, "The party last night, you guys were in the back room for a while, I heard her shouting, what they hell Damon? She's been looking like shit for a while. How long has this been going on?"

"A while, I'm not too sure how long." he answers honestly, because even he's not sure how long this game of cat and mouse has been going on.

"Don't fuck with her, Damon," Caroline warns, "she looks ready to drop at any moment. Do you even care?" and he does, he really, truly does, though he looks up at the ceiling and he sighs before looking back, "I'm scared, Damon." a shake of the head, "Really scared, I've never seen her like this. If you two have been together for a while now, how long has she been acting like this?"

"A year," Damon replies.

"And I only just started to noticed" Caroline murmurs, and she looks sad, regretful.

She looks Damon in the eyes; "She's drinking a lot more now. It's almost every night, then she vomits what ever shit she has in her stomach, whether it's because of the booze or you." she looks to the ground and shrugs, "You're like this because of Elena, right? Man she screwed you up big time."

"Bonnie knew," Damon replied, "she always knew." and he's defending himself and he feels like a child, but he can't help it, having the information thrown into his face like this, is too much for him to handle, he doesn't want the guilt.

"Damon," Caroline looks to him, "I think - I think she should live with you for a while."

"I thought you'd say she shouldn't see me anymore." Caroline rubs her head more.

"I would say that if I wasn't positive that would be the decision that would make her go off the edge."

* * *

**December 2015**

So Bonnie moves in with Damon and everything seems to be going all right. At first, she had dismissed the idea with living with the blue eyed vampire when Caroline first brought it up, she was afraid of smothering him until he left her completely. She's okay now though. She works a lot and is busy with school. She smiles more now, she laughs sometimes and she means it.

Sometimes she still cries, sometimes she can't laugh, or even fake a smile. Though it's better than before, much better, and Bonnie's okay with this, she can live with this.

Damon doesn't touch her any more, not even once and it scares her. It scares her that at night when he sleeps on the couch and she the bed. It scares her that he wont touch her, wont kiss her, wont let her kiss him. Damon goes out some nights and doesn't return until the morning and she's fearful that he's done it, that he's found a new replacement.

* * *

Bonnie's doing alright, he thinks. She doesn't cry much and, she's finally putting on weight again, making up for the 10 or 20 pounds she lost.

Damon doesn't touch her anymore, he's too afraid to, too nervous that she'll crumble right there, turn to clay, perhaps, or dust. She seems to do alright without his touch, though he can't stand it. He leaves at night and finds women willing to be with him for a night; though it's not the same and Damon wonders when he has decided to do it with women and not care who or how.

He's changed, he knows it. He had changed ever since Bonnie first kissed him.

Sometimes he thinks the cat and mouse game is finally over but Bonnie knows now that it hasn't finished, and possibly never will.

* * *

One day, Damon doesn't return to his apartment. She calls everyone she knows and they tell her they haven't seen him. Bonnie feels worried, though she decides she's being silly, it's only a day. Though a week goes by, and then, a month, and Damon hasn't returned and Bonnie realizes the game of cat and mouse has ended, because Damon isn't coming back.

* * *

He hasn't been near his old place in a long time. The place he, Stefan and Elena inhabited five years ago, where they lived day in and day out for two years before she died. He can still see them all together. He can still sense her.

At the moment Damon is living in a hotel not far from the old Salvatore Mansion. He knows he can't live there forever, and that eventually he'll have to go back to his apartment, to where Bonnie is because he does suppose he's as close to loving her as he can get and that it's time to get his shit together.

For now though, he wants to live in memories.

It's been years since he's seen Elena and he's forgetting the sound of her voice.

Lately he thinks of their 'could be' life together, the good and the bad. He also thinks of how Elena started their own separate game of cat and mouse with Stefan. A game, he doubts, he ever could have won.

Now Damon knows it's time to leave it behind, because Elena won the game a long ago, on the day she died.

He takes a deep breath and slowly comes to the realization that maybe Elena isn't the one for him after all.

* * *

**February 2016**

Bonnie never tells anyone that Damon has left though he's been gone for two months. She sits in Damon's bed when she doesn't have school or when she doesn't want to have sex with strangers.

It's scary, she scares herself, though she doesn't tell anyone, even when Caroline calls her up and tells her she is getting engaged.

Sometimes she draws on the walls in paint because it doesn't matter if Damon will get angry because she doubts he'll ever see it, doubts he'll ever return and it hurts, but she takes it in stride. She draws hearts, squiggles, handprints, everything and anything because she doesn't care.

Damon will never see what she's done to destroy this place and any and all memories within it.

Bonnie knows she could return to Caroline and Tyler, but there is no point to it, she doesn't want their pity and nothing will take the pain away.

Ever.

* * *

**March 2016**

Damon finally returns to Bonnie after two and a half months. He enters his apartment and feels his skin crawl in anger. She's defaced it, drew on the walls and stuck things to them such as posters and pictures. They are odd things that he had no idea how or why she's done as such. He walks past the small living room into his room, though she's not there. He calls for her, but she doesn't answer.

Damon finds Bonnie in the bathroom, she's on the floor and he thinks she's past out, though when he rolls the small girl over, he knows she's stopped breathing. She's in a pool full of her own vomit.

He knows right then that she's dead.

* * *

It turns out she passed out finally; not enough sustenance in her body. Turns out she vomited but was so weak she couldn't get up and, in the end, she suffocated.

A funeral is held, and even her absent father is there and he cries because, even though Damon knows the two have had multiple quarrels, it's still his little girl, his dead little girl.

After the funeral Caroline tries to attack Damon, shouting over and over again "It's all your fault! You did this! You killed her, you killed her!" and even Tyler has no hopes in restraining her. Damon doesn't try to stop her, because he knows she speaks the truth.

* * *

The guilt hits him hard, the guilt he's been piling up for a year and a half spills out. He used her, she knew it. He took away her virginity, she let him. He held her, gave her fake dreams; she accepted it. Damon was never strong enough to push away, to act like an actual adult and she was to lost to know any better. He feels horrid, feels his insides scream and his inner demons cackle as Caroline's words circle his mind.

Damon knows, deep down, that everyone blames him, and he doesn't mind it, he knows it's true.

It's his fault.

"_Sometimes, I hate you."_ he can hear her say in his mind, and he doesn't blame her, not even once, he wants her to hate him, even in those days when she told him she loves him or when she had sex with him, or when she made him dream of her.

Damon wants her to hate him, even after death, though he knows she doesn't and that she never did.

He can't die, but he wishes he could, and perhaps, if he put enough heart in it, he could die, he could make it happen, though he doesn't try hard enough. His heart is gone, though where it has ran off to, he doesn't know, all he knows is that it's not coming back.

* * *

Sometimes, the game of cat and mouse still runs in his head and he thinks of black hair and green eyes and a once perfect frame that is slowly deteriorating and eyes that speak of sadness. Damon can hear her laugh sometimes and he can see her pose in his mind.

After the funeral it hit him that he loved her. Apart of him has known it all along. He wishes he could let her know, but he knows that the time for that is long gone.

The game of cat and mouse has ended, and he knows there's been a draw.

* * *

**ATTENTION THIS MAY SEEM a little OCC. That is because this story is dealing with deep issues. I like to think that i kept them in character but you can be the judge of that. I hope you liked it. This was very hard for me, as I'm normally a writer who writes happy and nice things, so I hope I pulled it off.**

**Thank you for reading.**


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